DOHA: Ooredoo reached a milestone in its nationwide roll-out of the country’s first 4G services, with the activation of its 500th LTE site in Qatar this week. Activating the 500th site means that the 4G service range now extended to cover the whole of Qatar.

The 4G service enables customers to enjoy the best mobile broadband Internet speeds, the smoothest browsing experience and the capacity to send, upload and download files, no matter how big they are. The rise of 4G has created a spike in data usage across Qatar, as people download films, educational material and mobile apps faster now. It has also delivered an improvement to customers using 3G and 2G networks, as the migration to 4G has freed up space on the legacy networks.

Ooredoo’s 4G service is available for postpaid and prepaid customers with packages, starting from QR15 per week for Hala customers, and including new Shahry Smart Packs, which offer bundle of minutes, SMS, mobile data and access to 4G Key for QR175 per month.

The 4G network supports maximum speed as high as 100 Mbps, and on average, offering speed is three-to-six times faster than the 3G network.

“When we launched the trial phase of 4G in 2012, we promised our customers that the service would be affordable, accessible and innovative in the way it delivered Qatar’s fastest mobile Internet. We have lived up to our promise, with the addition of the 500th tower demonstrating that we have created a nationwide service that is unique in Qatar,” said Waleed Al Sayed, Chief Operating Officer.

Since its launch in April 2013, Ooredoo has expanded 4G coverage in record time, increasing the number of sites five-fold and evolving the service to make it accessible on a broad range of 4G-enabled devices. Ooredoo is continuing to launch network enhancements for 4G to improve indoor and outdoor performance, and reduce service interruptions, which will roll out throughout 2014. It is also working with device operators, including Apple and BlackBerry, to accelerate the pace at which the most popular devices in Qatar can access 4G. The Peninsula